Don’t even get me started on The Princess Bride. Morgenstern couldn’t follow a plot if it was leaving a trail of bread crumbs. Somebody should do a good abridgement.
I’ve discovered that a few of the Germanic sagas (and Beowulf for that matter) have a bad habit of pointless digressions. Nonetheless, I found them pretty enjoyable. I think this is really a symptom of the different things people look for in reading. As long as what the author’s saying is interesting, I can enjoy it, even if there are enormous digressions.
I haven’t read Hunchback, but I have read Les Miserables and it’s rather similar. Hugo had a tendency to go off on tangents, but I didn’t mind much because I thought they were interesting.
Unfortunatly, his Essay on the Paris Sewer system has spoiled me. Now almost every sewer I see in the movies seems far too clean, spaciousand well-lit to be real.
The chapter on Waterloo does set up the whole Thenadire plotline and it’s appropritate nice considering Napolean left his mark on much of the book and society.
As far as the authors are concerned, they are not straying away from the topic.
I will refer you once again to Auerbach’s Mimesis:
The first chapter of his work begins with an analysis of the scar of Odysseus, which his housekeeper Eurykleia discovers while washing his feet. Homer goes on a bit of an excursus to recount the scar’s story. Why this occurs at a moment of extreme dramatic tension is analyzed with tremendous clarity by Auerbach here.
I think this will help put your question into perspective.
The writing is actually extremely clear and transparent. Auerbach refrains from literary jargon. Even in translation he is crisp and highly intelligible. His writing is a breath of fresh air.
Perhaps your time could have been spent more profitably engaging the text rather than counting the words. Auerbach places more demands on the reader than Dan Brown, but the results of the reader’s efforts bear greater fruits.
Meh. He’s an amateur. Faulkner was renowned (or perhaps reproved) for once writing a sentance of some 1,300 odd words starting with “They bore it as though…”
85 words, indeed! Why, Wodehouse could make mincemeat of him even after a disreputable number of gin and tonics.
It was often part of the convention of novels of the time, though I don’t think the novel was so formalized. Most novels were considered lightweight, “pop” reading, and in the 19th century expository writing of long tracts was more “serious.” A novelist who threw in those digressions would be taken more seriously. Plus, as mentioned above, it would set the scene for the action. More modern novelists probably do it for different reasons, but I suppose the tradition had been set.
I don’t know if Hug wrote serials, but Dickens did, and he did this. It’s a lot easier to do when people are reading one chapter a week.
